j_shi

Funcom’s Dreamfall, one of my favorite games of all time, has something to say about where this could go!

Realized there's probably pref on Databricks too, which would further lower the value of its common. On the other hand, there could have been a markdown from the 38B since August '21

Actually seems Databricks got a great deal for Mosaic. Real qustion is why Mosaic took it v. hold out or do another round

Rough math plugging in public #s and comments here:

- All stock deal at Aug 2021 val of 38B (1B ARR)

- Assume rev doubled to 2B (which may even be aggressive)

- SAAS multiples are down 6x since Aug 2021

- 38B x 2 / 6 = $12.7B

- 12.7B / 38B * 1.3B = 434M = effective price

- Assume 100M to pref stock

--> Comes out to 334M, with a chunk of that (1/3? 1/4?) potentially subject to earn out

Disagree there are sacred timeless skills we ought to protect; tech has and will continue to reduce our need to spend mental bandwidth on skills

Similar offline risk goes for all tech: navigation, generating energy, finding food & water.

And as others have noted, like other personal tools, ai will become more portable and efficient (see progress on self hosted, minimal, efficiently trained models like Vicuna that are 92% parity with OpenAI fancy model)

Open source with own fine tuning closing in fast:

https://lmsys.org/blog/2023-03-30-vicuna/

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-ne...

Self-hosted + self-trained LLMs are probably the future for enterprise.

While consumers are happy to get their data mined to avoid paying, businesses are the opposite: willing to pay a lot to avoid feeding data to MSFT/GOOG/META.

They may give assurances on data protection (even here GitHub copilot TOS has sketchy language around saving down derived data), but can’t get around fundamental problem that their products need user interactions to work well.

So it seems with BigTechLLM there’s inherent tension between product competitiveness and data privacy, which makes them incompatible with enterprise.

Biz ideas along these lines: - Help enterprises set up, train, maintain own customized LLMs - Security, compliance, monitoring tools - Help AI startups get compliant with enterprise security - Fine tuning service

Bingo and similar deal with Facebook. The best way to get leverage and power with FBGOOG is for advertisers to cooperate instead of compete. We are trying to do this with ecomm advertisers right now (by getting advertisers to coordinate instead of bid against each other) but goes beyond any particular ad vertical

You mean his American wife whose parents were refugees from Vietnam? Source: light googling

Wait for enough confirmations where the payment becomes unlikely to reverse, which of course takes time and that's the more practical blocker for regular shops to accept Bitcoin.

Could also go strategic exit or PE route, though former tricky to put together and latter tough on valuation

This is the bull case for We that justifies a stratospheric valuation: it is the extranational life infra and connection market maker for the otherwise hyperalienated worker of tomorrow -- where corporations have surpassed "legacy" social and political units of organization and identity.

Where the valuation came down to earth was when public investors evaluated We as an incrementally better office rental company, and didn't buy the idea of We as creating and monetizing a religion.

ps can’t click last button on iphone se via iOS hn app

So both forks worth more 6mo in than they were immediately after split; sounds like actually supports idea forking for a good reason can be value accretive..

There are many valid criticisms of PoW but it's not contradictory to believe PoW can work (i.e. with large enough and distributed enough miner network) while simultaneously attacking particular PoW-secured networks

Seems by and large reasonable but notably doesn't address the elephant in the room: potential their hardware has built-in backdoors for China government access. Should be simple enough to provide at least basic assurances (a la Apple)

https://www.skishore.me/inkstone/

lmao. kernel of truth to be sure but in fairness American legal system and democratic governance do strictly result in more liberty and security for individuals by and large, corner cases notwithstanding

Defer to OP but that feels like bit lazy apologist framework for status quo.

A few (unsubstantiated) guesses at reasons to counter:

1 - Medium risk medium reward opportunities exist (a currently unprofitable but otherwise promising startup addressing a 25m niche can't get bank debt or venture funding)

2 - Could decrease risk holding reward (avg. multiple of investment) constant by having small funds with managers that have deep knowledge of particular niche deploy smaller checks in markets they are better at evaluating (v. large fund managers needing to cast net wider than their "lane")

3 - Size expectation can be correlated with risk. Can decrease risk holding reward (avg multiple of investment) constant by just having smaller funds writing smaller checks for smaller companies that be happy with smaller exits or alt. upside capture (v. forcing companies that could work with small exits into chasing big inflexible exits). Sure no 100x-ers but theoretically could see higher blended fund returns

4 - Opportunities generally continuous on risk and reward calling for equally diverse approaches to capitalization

Awesome to see innovation from capital providers on the instrument in the wild. As a niche market founder wish option like Earnest existed when we were raising early financing.

Curious - to extent you're willing to share - what dynamics are like for LPs (assuming raising outside). Since median vc fund return is barely 1x, and traditional VCs sometimes blow up otherwise good niche companies by forcing them to go big or bust, targeting 3-5x returns with way faster liquidity for investors a super interesting alternative.

And if the niche market turns out to be a massive market, can still go in with eyes wide open!

I'd like to see more content like this. Find it 100x more helpful than the success stories. Karenina principle and whatnot. Would gladly subscribe and pay buku bucks for a more rigorous startupgraveyard-esque page. And would gladly contribute as well..

Main reason likely natural down cycle following parabolic run-up. Remember btc/crypto still a global, minimally regulated market driven by and large by unsophisticated retail investors (though pros are increasingly getting in). Domino effect / reflexivity on way up and on way down. Marginal buyer was simply exhausted at some pt, and institutional demand expected to be next big marginal buyer didn't materialize as quickly as people thought.

That said one guess on a trigger for the most recent sell off was that Bitcoin Cash, a fork of "reference" Bitcoin, forked in a bigly hostile way, resulting in two new Bitcoin Cash chains (Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV - for satoshi vision lol) each now with its hash power majority controlled by one group e.g. highly centralized. The market is confronting the possibility that proof of work -- the most widely used consensus mechanism -- is way more centralized than it thought, and way more subject to value destruction from a tiny % of people.

Lead contamination in school water supplies is a particularly pernicious, under-addressed, and improperly diagnosed problem, happening right here in California - with significant downstream developmental health consequences for children.

An SF-based group Measure Water is fighting for a solution to the problem, starting with getting schools to correctly examine their water.

I'm friends with the founder and she'd welcome anyone interested in helping to reach out at team@measurewater.org

Is there a list of all apps/services that rely on S3?